Pure arcade and then literally a few days later I saw some chatter about The Golf Club. Created by a small group in Canada that was challenging EA Sports.
SO - after spending $$ on Tiger and a little more $$ on Rory I spend MORE $$ on The Golf Club.
SADLY I picked up The Golf Club ONE WEEK before The Golf Club 2 came out (TGC2).
SO - I purchased TGC2 and it was amazing. The graphics were a little rough but the ball flight dynamics were fantastic and it took a little skill to play.
After a year of playing TGC2 TGC19 came out a big leap in everything. Graphics were fantastic the ball flight and hitting was honed in and the Course design, while over MY head was drawing attention to some REALLY courses.
I played TGC19 for two years and NOW - 2K has been added to the HB Studios and this is a generational leap in virtual golf.
YES - I have been obsessing over this since Thursday night midnight and all weekend. I had to tell DJ to just bare with me for a few days. When TGC19 came out as luck would have it DJ was REALLY sick in bed. WHAT LUCK. I spent the whole weekend playing and making sure she had ice and anything else and she wold go back to sleep for hours - PERFECT!
no luck this year. But she was diamond "painting" all weekend so no worries.
A round takes about 45 minutes and add a large number of hours on the driving range and menu searching. After 12 rounds . . . . I am up to BAD using "Pro" clubs.
On Tour MASTER clubs will be used. I'm +4 to +8 using Pro clubs. MASTER clubs I have rage quit a few times when I'm +7 after 4 holes. There is a Legendary setting and no streamer has hit under par yet.
ANYWAY. this is an amazing piece of software. Everything is customizable with 6 difficulty levels with PRO (what I have been playing) being #4.
The courses included are rather simple but with new courses being ported over every day from the old software they will get better.
They have taken away chart making. With the old game you could use charts in clubs and wind and elevation. Golf was a math problem (like real life golf) wind was one click for every MPH, elevation was 30 feet up or down was add or subtract 10 yards.
WELL - no more clicking. Anything where you could click is now a joy stick. The high the loft the more wind effects the ball. Now you can put spin on the ball but it comes with a small forgiveness penalty.
The more you play the more XPs you earn to buy new clubs. Each club has 6 different ratings. Longer clubs have less forgiveness and so forth. and there are 20 different sets to choose from. On the right is an example. The WHITE line is what I have now and the red and green show what happens with if you purchase this club. less distance shot shaping (drawing and so forth) is easier, and forgiveness (swinging too fast or slow) is better but your swing plane is far harder BUT you can control distance easier.
Handicaps are fixed so that make actual sense. Putting is harder as they made the holes a little smaller. They took away the PUNCH shot but my lowering the attack angel AND closing the loft of the club you can do a PUNCH.
you can mix and match sets.
Its MUCH easier to take an 80% shot now. Before it was 100% and loft or de-loft for distance control. Now you can do basically anything. And it's hard.
Joystick calibration is a thing so XBox, PS4 and PC are all on lever playing fields. The two new platforms Twitch and something else are a small problem.
Difficulty levels. The Beginner lever is basically arcade and useless but to learn the game it's there and EVERYTHING in the HUD is customizable. so so many things.
I'm not a designer but it seems they are a happy lot. SO - OVERALL I'm very happy. Sadly TGCTours will make EVERYONE play MASTERS.
Like actual real golf there is an explosion in players. TGCTous started season 6 with maybe 2000 players, TGCTours ended with about 5000. But that ain't nothing.
Streamers that play rounds online and review the game have seen their followers go from 20,000 to over 100,000 in a week. Like Kestrel Ridge, I have NEVER seen so many people golfing this year on Kestrel.
SO - if you have $60 to spare and want to virtual golf on software that is FAR better than anything ever created before check out PGA2K21.
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The GOOD news is I went down from 2 mg of prednisone to 1.5mg and my body is rebelling a bit as my PMR spiked up about 10% and the side issue is my left knee swelled up a bit. meloxicam in my future which SHOULD calm things down for a week at least until my body figures out what it needs to do (it has done great so far).
SERIOUSLY - don't take your youth for granted. ANY issue you have now will be WAY WAY worse when you hit 60s. I wish I would have stopped playing softball earlier in my life to save my knees.
Sports when "young" will REALLY slow you down when you get near retirement.
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WEATHER - HOT HOT HOT 90s until Friday 70s after that
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